The Core Blog » EnCorehttp://blogs.bu.edu/core
news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core CurriculumThu, 30 Jul 2015 15:14:23 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.5Notes from the December 2014 EnCore Book Club: The Home of THE Many-Gableshttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/12/03/notes-from-the-december-2014-encore-book-club-the-home-of-the-many-gables/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/12/03/notes-from-the-december-2014-encore-book-club-the-home-of-the-many-gables/#commentsThu, 04 Dec 2014 03:23:41 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=4368

It’s that time of month. Tonight, EnCore-sters met to discuss Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The House of THE Seven Gables. One of the club attendees, the lovely Kim Santo, took great issue with one nefarious, print-on-demand copy of the novel present at the meeting that clearly lacked the necessary article on the volume title (I’ll let you guess who brought that copy to the meeting). To make up for that frightening book’s omission, all references to the “THE” will now be capitalized.

Pooling our copies

The novel follows a few generations of two New England families, the Pyncheons and the Maules, detailing their blood-soaked history and insinuating the presence of a curse laid on the Pyncheons and their stagnant, stately home. Is Hawthorne’s novel unduly ignored in current book currents, shunted to the shadows of its more popular cousin The Scarlet Letter? Or is it a rightfully ignored, repetitious, impish rapier-thrust at colonial America’s values and the centuries of social battle engendered from our forefathers? Can we trust this mischievous narrator? And is Kim slightly crazy for wishing she could purchase and live in the House of THE Seven Gables?

All of these questions were explored, as we nommed Bertucci’s pizza (much love of sporkie was expressed at the outset of dinner) and drank copious amounts of red wine. We also dissected the very important topic of Hawthorne’s perceived hotness or, to use the technical term, “foxy-ness.”

From the start of the novel, we are treated to repetitious and heavy-handed descriptions of character features, and there was disagreement as to the necessity of this bloated prose. Do we NEED to hear 500 different times how a character’s scowl does not reflect her true nature, or how a man’s smile can be so sunny and “sultry” it dries the dirt in the road? While different readers had different reactions to the narrator’s florid and overgrown language, it led to the important topic of Hawthorne’s attitude towards puritanism, the aristocracy, and plebeianism. No one is (figuratively) left standing by the end of the novel.

When you stare into the void of Hawthorne’s foxy eyes…does the void stare back?

One reader ventured that Hawthorne equally mocked all social classes, being the literary maverick that he was. Another pointed out that the playful mockery in the text was not just directed at political and social targets. Hawthorne goofs around with elements of the Gothic literary genre; as attendees of October’s book club might recognize, Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon, molding away in their lugubrious mansion, resemble nothing so much as a parodic version of the sibling tenants of Poe’s “House of Usher.”

Soon, we moved into the topic of morality. Clifford’s languid obsession with the Beautiful provided a fascinating clash with the dynamism and sometimes greedy actions of other characters. Where does virtue lie? The novel does not allow for simplistic moralizing, and that may be what keeps the story interesting (that and the mystery behind the family curse, and the burning question of whether ghosts are lurking in dark corners).

When we tired of intellectual discussion, we proceeded to mock the summary of the novel printed on the back of the nefarious POD edition. Here’s where some of the silliness led us:

“…the tenants of the many-gabled house…what? Many-gabled? Are you serious?”

**pause**

“…Multi-gabled!”

“Poly-gabled.”

And the clear winner:

“#that’ssogabled”

If you want in on this fun, please do join us for January’s book club, taking place on Wednesday the 7th. We will be reading A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. A nice, swift read. Festive treats and boozes will be involved. And you don’t even need to read the book.

Hard-Core alums gathered on Guy Fawkes Day (November 5th) to discuss Angela Carter’s award-winning novel, Nights at the Circus. Over delicious El Pelon Mexican fare and several bottles of wine and beer, we bantered about Cockney accents, multiple voice narratives, and fin-de-siecle Europe’s fascination with the freaky, the sleazy, and the revolutionary.

Is Fevvers (supposed to sound like “Feathers”), the Winged Victory, the virginal Flying Lady, the toast of Europe, a big fraud (both in terms of her girth and the magnitude of her deception)? Hard to say, since we can’t be sure we can trust any of the witnesses to her Grand Tour through London, St. Petersburg, and Siberia.

After Morrison, Poe, and Carter, we will be taking one last plunge into Gothic lit with our December 3rd choice: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables.

Join us at 6pm on the first Wednesday of the month for free food, boozes, and talkiness. No need to read the book, just come with some conversation to contribute.

Pumpkin beer, pumpkin “blondies,” pumpkin whiskey (that’s right), pumpkin ice cream, Halloween-themed Jo-Jos, OTTO pizza, wine and cider and hot tea and more; this was the fall spread that the EnCore book club attendees tucked into as they pulled out their copies of Edgar A. Poe’s short stories.

One could title this meeting “From Victorians to the Void.” The discussion ranged widely for three hours. We began by sharing our particular attitudes towards the ghostly and the gruesome. What were the scariest films we ever saw? Were we most disturbed by the brightly eerie moments from The Shining? The blood-spattering scenes from Saw? The banality of 80’s kitsch from American Psycho?

We discussed Poe’s incessant themes of young, beautiful women dying young, of catatonia leading to premature burials, of the “Imp of the Perverse” within us all which threatens to blow off our tightly screwed lids. But we aren’t Victorians; does this mean we are any less obsessed with death?

Somehow, we veered from talk of serial-killers and psychopaths to the inner demon latent within the average Joe, and to the existential dread we push aside every day. Neil Gaiman once said of Poe that he not only saw the skull beneath human flesh, but that he “could not forget the skin that once covered it.” Perhaps this accounts for Poe’s enduring fascination and creepiness; in the end, nothing is scarier than what is irrevocably human.

If you could not join us for this meeting, worry not; the November book club will take place on the 5th (Guy Fawkes Day!). The EnCore book club will discuss Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter, a Gothic wit in her own right. Whether you get your hands on the book or not, join us at CAS 119, for victuals and verbosity, verisimilitude and villainous alliteration.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/10/09/notes-from-the-october-2014-encore-book-club-edgar-allan-poe/feed/0Notes from the February 2014 EnCore Book Club: What is Life?http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/02/20/notes-from-the-february-2014-encore-book-club-what-is-life/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/02/20/notes-from-the-february-2014-encore-book-club-what-is-life/#commentsFri, 21 Feb 2014 01:15:35 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=3853This month, EnCore book club attendees struggled with Erwin Schrodinger’s slim volume, What is Life?, a book that, as quoted in Goodreads, was “written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA.”

Erwin Schrodinger is an inescapable figure in Core’s Natural Science course, CC105; the Austrian physicist was instrumental to the study of quantum mechanics, and he is most well known for the paradoxical thought experiment that carries his name (and is efficiently summarized here). We were all intrigued as to what would it be like to read about biology from a physicist’s perspective.

The result was a bit lackluster. Why were most attendees less than enthusiastic? Was it simply a language barrier (Schrodinger himself apologizes for his English in the text)? Or perhaps it had to do with the nature of science writing in general? How simple is too reductive, and how complicated is too dense and difficult? Does a science writer need to relate every phenomenon to everyday life?

The EnCore book club is sending out request; please let us know what are the science books that you have most enjoyed, and that you would most recommend to the layman. Let us know, and join us next month at book club!

Next meeting, on March 5th, we shall be reading Sir Christopher Rick’s work, Milton’s Grand Style. Whether you get to read/finish/open the book at all or not, join us for free food and discussion at the Core office; don’t forget to BYOB if you are of age!

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/02/20/notes-from-the-february-2014-encore-book-club-what-is-life/feed/0Notes from the November 2013 EnCore Book Club: Frankensteinhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/11/15/notes-from-the-november-2013-encore-book-club-frankenstein/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2013/11/15/notes-from-the-november-2013-encore-book-club-frankenstein/#commentsSat, 16 Nov 2013 03:55:05 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=3629Big turn-out this month: EnCore book club members met to discuss the much-beloved Gothic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley.

The discussion began with the novel’s framing device. The story begins with an exchange of letters between Captain Robert Walton and his sister. The captain, on an expedition to the North Pole, meets with Victor Frankenstein, a broken man on a journey to destroy a creature he brought to life using unspeakable secrets of science. The rest should be familiar to many readers/horror fans. These opening letters are a Gothic device meant to give a veneer of plausibility to otherwise extraordinary events.

Attendees discussed the Romantic influences at work in the story: the majesty of nature and its terrifying power, the consequences of stepping beyond the bounds of human ability, and the inevitable comeuppance that will follow he who does not know his limits.

“Why do we like the Gothic? Why do we like scary things?” “Cos our lives don’t have danger anymore.” “Have you SEEN the MBTA?”

We also discussed why we enjoy works that make us afraid, make us feel revulsion, make us weep. Is it because we no longer fear for our lives on a regular basis, and we are searching for a stimulus? What is more fearful: explicit gore, or what our imagination produces? The violence in Frankenstein is much more muted than that which 21st century horror films often provide for us. Is what we’re afraid of so different from what terrorized the Victorians?

We can all agree that what is truly terrifying is not the creature’s crimes, but rather Victor’s inability to empathize with the living being he has created. The creature has feelings, language, can walk…who is truly the inhuman one?

In his attempt to stop death, Victor succeeds in producing life, but what a life.

“There is a serious birth control message in this book.”

Hilarious, but true: the novel clearly warns against producing life in non-Christian-sanctioned ways, and the Bride of Frankenstein never comes to be due to Victor’s fear the two monsters will choose to populate the world with horrid spawn. Clearly, Victorian men know best how to control women’s bodies.

The themes of dehumanization and defilement are manifold. Perhaps this explains why, in the incredibly popular UK National Theatre stage adaptation of the play, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller alternating in the scientist/monster roles, Elizabeth, Victor’s bride-to-be, is not only murdered by the creature, but is also raped. He defiles and destroys her as completely as Victor desecrates and destroys his second creation.

In the end, it is hard to say who exactly is the monster. It must be no coincidence most people erroneously believe the creature’s name is Frankenstein.

Sorry you missed out on the discussion? Join us at our next meeting: on December 4th, we will be meeting in the Core office to discuss J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. If you are of age, BYOB, and there will be free food for all!

Memorable Quotes from the evening:

“Who has done that? Who has put organs together to make a live thing?” “I have!”

Two young kids and a rewarding job. Married to my BU girlfriend. What more could I ask for?

Benefits of the Core: Benjamin writes:

Core helps me look at the world in a different way. The values Core teaches stay with you and keep you on the right track to try to do the right things, to lead a good life. They also help me keep things in perspective so you never forget what’s truly important.

Benjamin at the Back Bay Ball, Spring 2000.

Hobbies or interests that started at the Core and have continued to become life-long interests: Benjamin writes:

I’ve always loved music, but the Core helped me analyze what I was listening to in a new way. I’m performing in Don Giovanni later this month, something I studied in the Core.

I spent four years at BU as an undergrad, but have spent the last three post-graduation years always involved in the university in some capacity (involved with Core’s EnCore group, student theater groups, etc.).

Current location: Boston, MA, USA.

Company and Title: Employee at Sargent College, and at BUMC.

Recent activities: Fabiana writes:

I am currently a graduate student at Boston College studying English literature, with a particular focus on literary translation. I have worked with BU and independent theater groups in Boston for the last five years. I am very active with the Core alumni group EnCore.

Benefits of the Core: Fabiana writes:

The fields I explored in college, and which my Core experience greatly enriched (history, philosophy, psychology, literature, art) provided me with a variety of tools I could apply in multiple professions. In short, by teaching me how to write, to discuss, and to always look to discover more, the Core taught me how to think; it gave me the investment with the biggest return.

Fabiana (right) with her very serious Core classmates in 2008.

Hobbies or interests that started at the Core and have continued to become life-long interests: Fabiana writes:

My Core experiences have had a particularly profound influence on my life in that they taught me to think of my personal and academic education holistically. When I realized that I did not want to pursue a career I had felt committed to for most of my adult life (clinical psychology), I was able to reorient myself and turn a lifelong passion (literature) into a concrete career path.

Fabiana adds: Whether you’re a potential Core student, a current one, or an alum who wants to reconnect with the Core, I’m always happy to discuss this great program.

EnCore book club members met this month to discuss Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame (click on the link to read the Goodreads summary).

The discussion got off to a slow start, considering many members attending had either not read the book, or had not finished it. Such a situation has never deterred book club attendees, and several discussion points soon arose:

Political Allusions in Rushdie’s Novel

“A wall I hit: Is Rushdie giving me a history lesson of Pakistan?”

A point of interest (and alienation) for many was that the novel is based on real historical events and people from 20th century Pakistan, portrayed in the style of magical realism. Two central figures are Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (fictionalized as Iskander Harappa) and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (fictionalized as General Raza Hyder). While some argued that some basic knowledge of the period was sufficient to enjoy the book, others disagreed.

A constant comparison throughout the discussion was to another Rushdie work, Midnight’s Children. Though a somewhat longer work that delves deeply into the political history of India’s independence, many argued that its story was more captivating, while continuing to display Rushdie’s idiosyncratic sentence structure, playful language twists, and childlike perspectives.

There was disagreement as to whether Rushdie’s interrupting omniscient narrator in Shame was as effective in his self-awareness. While some were impacted by the imagery of a struggling writer trying to pull different aspects of his story together, different elements that wriggled and refused to sit still, like naughty children, others agreed that Rushdie “got a bit precious with his sections on meta-narrative.”

Listening intently

Nevertheless, someone pointed out that like Midnight’s Children, Shame often portrays that from “A child’s point of view: adults suck. And women–REALLY don’t want to be one.”

Shame and Morality

“Shame in the novel is a fizzy drink from a vending machine; when the cup is removed, it spills everywhere.”

It affects everything, and it makes a real mess. But does it instigate change or conformity?

Does shame shape the personality of the characters, rather than their actions? It was pointed out that shame is actually overwhelmingly lacking in the novel, in the sense that it does not exist as any deterrent to violence or evil. Rushdie’s potential point: Why does no one stop? Have we no decency? Will the slaughters ever cease? Considering the recent release of the documentary The Act of Killing (2013), global prospects are bleak.

As we always have done with other Core works, we discussed human nature, more specifically “the feelings we get when we do bad things,” and its visible signal: the blush. It varies by person, and by culture: “What turns my face red wouldn’t necessarily turn your face red.”

Enjoying libations

Can we even count on culture to tell us what’s right, and what’s wrong? This discussion echoed our last meeting, when we discussed the ethical dilemmas surrounding the study of post-colonialism.

The discussion raised more questions than conclusions: “If you take it away from religion and government, morality gets much more complicated and layered.”

“We’ve made up the distinction between hurting somebody and, you know, getting caught masturbating. The scary thing is that it’s an arbitrary line we set.”

Bottom line: What are we to make of Rushdie’s story? Is it even his story to tell? As someone wisely noted, “The position of the impassioned outsider, where you don’t necessarily have the right to lay claim to it, is a difficult place to be.”

Other Memorable quotes

“Lady…you have no eyebrows. And you’re afraid of winds.” “Or toilets!”

“Omar can feel shame!” “Yeah, but then he gets a block of ice, and he’s like, ‘It’s cool.’ Like, literally.”

This month, EnCore’s book club delved into Things Fall Apart, by the renowned and recently deceased Nigerian scholar Chinua Achebe. As described on the back of the paperback 50th Anniversary Edition from Anchor Books, the novel “tells two intertwining stories, both centered on Okonkwo, a ‘strong man’ of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society…The second…concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries.”

The discussion veered from cultural integration vs. negation to religion, from politics to colonialism, from narrative techniques to missionaries to reaching outer space. “Should we give medicine to isolated tribes?” and “Is the moon made of green cheese?” were only a few of the mysteries we perused, munching on wraps and drinking beer and wine in the AC-ed Core office this mild Wednesday night.

We started off the discussion by musing on why the novel is often assigned to high schoolers in the United States, and is often listed as teen fiction and located in teen sections of libraries. Is it because, due to the narrative’s seemingly simple language, it is an easily accessible example of foreign literature?

Speaking of which: why is is that this novel, one of the few examples of Nigerian literature widely read in America, has a title that can be considered an anthem to Western modernism, with all the trauma and seismic shifts the movement entailed? The title refers to one of the most famous poem’s in the English language, “The Second Coming,” written by W. B. Yeats.

During the evening, there were disagreements as to whether we are thrown into the stories and treated as fellow members of the tribe as we followed their victories and travails, or whether the narrative distances us from them, treating the characters as mere objects in the story, trapped under a museum diorama we can never quite access.

Can this story be considered an analogy, a warning folktale for the West as it exited the World Wars not-quite-unscathed? Or do we commit another colonial crime to think of it as such? Should we treat other cultures as museum pieces, in order to “preserve the traditions” we don’t disagree with? Join us in our next meeting to voice your own opinion on another great work.

Deep in discussion

Memorable Quotes:

“Stories are how you transmit everything that defines a community.”

(Someone pretending to talk to Okonkwo): “You are really embarrassing me in front of all these elders.”

“The EU: the largest disaster ever.”

Because everything else is accessible, “Space is the only place I can’t get to.”

“I’m going to argue against progress.”

“How culturally unique is this story? The veteran is a dad who grew up poor and thinks his son is a sissy, and occasionally beats his wife. You can put the people almost anywhere.”

“All people want is to feel empowered and safe.”

On nostalgia: “The 50s: when men were men, and women liked it.”

A quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Caesar didn’t say, “I came, I saw, I conquered, and I felt bad about it.”

The EnCore book club met this month to discuss the popular graphic novel Persepolis, by Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi. It was an unusual choice for the group for a variety of reasons: the book is a memoir of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran, it was originally written in French, and it was published as a graphic novel. By choosing this medium, Satrapi tells her story as much through her black and white, Matisse-like artwork as she does through her words.

The conversation veered from the nature of comics as art to political realities and fiction. Would Satrapi’s story have beeen better told in the form of a conventional book? Would Iran’s cultural story? What do we in America think about the fact that much of the political and moral vitriol many Iranians feel towards the West is due to the role America and Britain had in establishing the Shah’s regime early in the 20th century? Is Persepolis less valuable for its focus on art and the individual over historical accuracy, or is that an irrelevant point?

Satrapi herself has been quoted as saying that the facts of the story, as we read it, must be seen exclusively from the perspective of her young self at the time. For example, some minor plot details are actually historically inaccurate, because they reflect the strongest rumors that were circulating at that time (e.g. which political groups were in charge of certain attacks on buildings or protest crowds). Narrow in scope or not, Satrapi’s background and personal experience (coming from a “Westernized” and cultivated intellectual family, living through the Iraq-Iran war, studying abroad, and returning to her homeland) offer a unique, funny, and compelling glimpse into the aftermath and ongoing consequences of the Iranian Cultural Revolution.

EnCore held a screening of the award-winning film Persepolis (2007) on February 20th at the Kenmore Classroom Building, to further explore how this unconventional book was adapted to the unconventional medium of animation, and what was gained or lost as a result.

Does this sound like a discussion you would have wanted to take part in? EnCore will continue its Revolutionary Theme next month with Former People, a look at the fall of the Russian aristocracy after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Regardless of whether you’ve read all, part, or none of the book, we look forward to seeing any Core folks join us on March 6th for another fun discussion.